On 20 June, about 30 members from London Region CND including 4 Japanese supporters from JAN UK (Japanese Against Nuclear) and Nipponzan Myohoji participated in the MAD Hatters Tea Party to protest against Nuclear Weapons. This was organized at the entrance to the Burghfield AWE (Atomic Weapon Establishment) where the UK Nuclear Bombs are assembled.

On the same day in Japan the Nuclear Regulation Authority ( NRA ) said that No.1 and No.2 reactors at Kansai Electric’s Takahama plant can extend operation for up to 20 years because they meet safety guidelines. This decision was quickly denounced by Greenpeace, which said the move goes far beyond regulatory failure.

With strong solidarity with the Japanese Anti-Nuclear movements including every Friday evening Anti-Nuclear Power demo in front of Prime Minister’s official residence and the Diet in Tokyo, we, JAN-UK, KickNuclear and CND are planning to organise another monthly protest vigil and the statement read-out to the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and TEPCO on 24 June 2016.

Our Friday vigil will start from 10.00 AM and the statement read-out from 11.30 AM. We will then move on to the TEPCO office ( 14-18 Holborn near Chancery Lane station ). There we will have a vigil and hand in the statement to TEPCO from 13.00 to 13.30 PM.

Anyone is welcome to join in with Anti-Nuclear/Peace messages, songs, poems, etc.

Five years after the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, 400 tonnes a day of radioactive water continues to pour into the Pacific Ocean. There are now over 30 million 1-tonne, 1m3 black plastic bags containing radioactive debris from the ‘cleanup’, piling up along the coast, in fields, around blocks of flats, along the edge of school grounds. These bags were designed to last a maximum of 5 years but there is still no permanent home for them – and there won’t be until at least 2020.

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was built on an ancient riverbed. For the last five years, water coming from the hills behind the site has poured down this old riverbed, passing through the multiple cracks and holes in the basements of the reactor buildings, where it mixes with the escaped nuclear fuel, becoming radioactive before flowing on into the Pacific Ocean. About 400 tonnes a day. In order to stop this flow, site owners Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) have attempted to surround the plant with an ‘ice wall’. Brine, cooled to -30 degrees C, passes through pipes set into the ground, freezing the soil around them. One problem with this is that the ice wall only goes down 30 metres. Any cracks, fissures or porosity in the bedrock beneath it will provide a route for the deadly contamination to find its way into the ocean – for centuries. Another problem is the risk of thawing should there be an interruption to the electricity required to freeze and maintain the ice wall – also for centuries. A third problem is that now the size of the pool of lethal water has been increased, from inside the building basements to the much larger area within the ice wall as well. In the event of an earthquake fracturing the ice wall or the bedrock beneath the site, this pool will escape. Also the newly waterlogged ground within the ice wall could cause the reactor buildings to subside. Tepco recently admitted that the ice wall will let through 50 tonnes of contaminated water a day anyway. Better than 400, but still a permanent ecological catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the 800,000 tonnes of poisoned water in tanks on the site remains a problem. Tepco claim to be filtering the worst radionuclides out through the ALPS filter process. This produces a thick, highly radioactive sludge which still needs to be stored. And the remaining water still contains tritium – radioactive hydrogen – which cannot be safely removed [1]. Tepco want to dump this in the Pacific, claiming that it will be diluted and therefore not a problem. However they are finding it hard to convince local people, including fishermen, that this is a good idea.

Last year Tepco finished removing the used nuclear fuel from reactor 4. But there are still tonnes of used nuclear fuel in large, swimming pool-like ‘spent fuel pools’ on top of reactor buildings 1, 2 and 3. These are harder to work on due to the massive levels of radioactivity in the buildings. Should another earthquake collapse the buildings or crack and drain the pools, the exposed fuel would catch fire and release massive amounts of radioactivity, causing a global catastrophe.

Tepco have begun preparations to empty spent fuel pool 3, which involves a new floor, 6 metres above the roof, with a 75 tonne crane, and 22 cameras so that workers can operate all this remotely. We’ll just have to wait and see how this turns out, again hoping nothing goes wrong.

Why are Tepco stopping work at Fukushima Daiichi for 2 days during the 42nd G7 summit? The venue is 700km away in Mie prefecture. Does work at Fukushima pose a risk to the bigwig delegates? If so, does it not also pose a risk to the citizens of Japan during the other 363 days of the year?

During the recent multiple earthquakes on the island of Kyushu, the Abe administration ordered NHK, the Japanese equivalent to the BBC, to only repeat government statements and consult no external experts. Not wanting anything to get in the way of restarting the other nuclear power plants?

Back in 2012, Prime Minister Noda established a policy to phase out nuclear power by 2030. Giving the impression that it represented the official views of the US, Washington DC-based think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was among those who strongly objected and when Shinzo Abe became PM in December 2012 he overturned the nuclear phase-out policy. In 2014 CSIS revealed that it had received at least $500,000 from Japan – one of its top three donors. Other CSIS donors from this time include a number of Japanese and US nuclear industry companies … [2] [3]

But perhaps the main feature of this 5th year of the catastrophe is the process of forgetting Fukushima. Having denied that there had even been a meltdown for the first two months, when they knew at the end of the first day they had one meltdown, and knew within three days that they had three meltdowns, Tepco and the Japanese government now insist that it is the evacuations and the fear of radiation that cause stress and death, not the radiation itself. Is it better that the population remain in place, quietly absorbing radiation, and concentrate on remaining cheerful and optimistic? Many of the 100,000 evacuees are to have their compensation cut off and are being told it’s safe to return to areas that have up to 20 milliSieverts a year (mSv/yr) of radiation. Yet in Chernobyl areas with 1-5mSv/yr were ‘areas with relocation rights’, while areas over 5mSv could not be lived in or even farmed. Under the Japanese Atomic Energy Basic Law, the maximum annual exposure limit for the public used to be set at 1 mSv. But people are now being forced to accept a revised threshold 20 times greater.

The word ‘radiophobia’ is being used to describe the Japanese peoples’ fear of radiation. As if fear were the problem and not the huge amounts of dangerous radioactivity initially released, and the chronic internal exposure to low-level radiation via the ingestion of contaminated food and water and the inhalation of radioactive dust. People whose kids run a high temperature, have nosebleeds, develop a cancer, are told that their worry about radiation is irrational. All so that the other nuclear power plants can be restarted, so that money can be made and ‘restoration’ can proceed, in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics? This is, perhaps, the greatest crime to emerge from this tragedy.